Welcome to the Map of Early Modern London!
Now the city being like a vast sea, full of gusts, fearful-dangerous shelves and rocks, ready at every storm to sink and cast away the weak and unexperienced bark . . . I, like another Columbus or Drake . . . have drawn you this chart or map for your guide as well out of mine own as my many friends experience. (Henry Peacham, The Art of Living in London [1643])
Click on the Map to begin your journey, or try our new experimental map.
NEWS!! The Map of Early Modern London now has a blog. Click here to view entries. (JAJ, 17 September 2008)
NEWS!! The Guidelines for Contributors have been posted. (JAJ, 10 September 2008)
This site maps the streets, sites, and significant boundaries of late sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century London. You will see many of the theatres and landmarks of Shakespeare's time, and learn about the history and culture of the city in which he lived and worked.
There are several ways to navigate early modern London. The Index lists sites, streets, and wards in London, as well as people mentioned in the website and literary references to the streets and sites we have mapped. Click on the location marker (e.g., A1) to go to the relevant section of the map, or on the name to go to the explanatory page. If you wish to study the Map, go to an enlarged section of the map, select "Show All," and move your mouse to activate the tags that identify buildings and streets; some of these tags are also links to explanatory pages.
The experimental map adds google-style layers to the map platform. My research assistant (Melanie Chernyk) and I have redrawn all of the layers, drawing upon the cartographic evidence of the map itself, the narrative evidence in John Stow's A Survey of London, and historical and archeological research. We are particularly indebted to The A to Z of Elizabethan London by Adrian Prockter and Robert Taylor (introductory notes by John Fisher). The new layers were posted on 15 February 2008. Special thanks to Stewart Arneil of the Humanities Computing and Media Centre at the University of Victoria.
The Library contains editions of royal entries and mayoral pageants. The Topics section contains articles on institutions and various aspects of London life. The Sources page provides a bibliography of all works cited in the project. Our goal is to develop this page into a regularly updated database of ongoing published work in the interdisciplinary field of London Studies. To that end, we have formed a partnership with the journal Early Theatre (ed. Dr. Helen Ostovich).Site administered and maintained by Dr. Janelle Jenstad, University of Victoria, with funding from the Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada. Technical assistance has been funded by a Canadian Foundation for Innovation grant to TAPoR (Text Analysis Portal for Research), the Dean of Humanities at the University of Victoria, and the Office of Research Services at the University of Victoria.
-- Janelle Jenstad (General Editor). Last updated: 20 February 2008
© The Agas map is used on this website by kind permission of the Guildhall Library, Corporation of the City of London. Copyright law prohibits further reproduction of these images in any form under any circumstances. More Information.